There’s never been a time for digital marketers where content has been at the forefront of carrying the marketing strategy. Through growing competition on all fronts, content has never been more king.
As I like to tell my team, there are different types of content for different purposes (in which I’ll write a whole separate post about,) which will help for scale and growth. It only takes ONE great piece of content that can really start to drive your business, or at-least change it in terms of taking it to another level.
SEMRUSH did an incredible job at explaining the content strategy and lifecycle approach.
Research
âœ”ï¸ Conduct your market analysis;
âœ”ï¸ Run competitive research;
âœ”ï¸ Run a content audit;
âœ”ï¸ Identify content & keyword gaps;
âœ”ï¸ Identify your sales funnel;
âœ”ï¸ Build your buyer personas.
Ideation & planning
âœ”ï¸ Choose relevant business metrics;
âœ”ï¸ Set goals using the OKR planning system;
âœ”ï¸ Check if your key results using the SMART approach;
âœ”ï¸ Brainstorm ideas for achieving your key results;
âœ”ï¸ Create an action plan.
Content creation & optimization
âœ”ï¸ Research content topics resonating with your audience personas;
âœ”ï¸ Prioritize them;
âœ”ï¸ Decide on content formats;
âœ”ï¸ Create valuable and unique content;
âœ”ï¸ Make it appealing for readers: add stats, visuals, expert quotes;
âœ”ï¸ Make it SEO-friendly;
âœ”ï¸ Make it easy-to-share: add social share buttons, click-to-tweets;
Content distribution
âœ”ï¸ Create a distribution strategy;
âœ”ï¸ Repurpose your content and share on social media;
âœ”ï¸ Collaborate with influencers and partners;
âœ”ï¸ Use content communities;
âœ”ï¸ Build high-quality links;
âœ”ï¸ Run a paid ads campaign;
âœ”ï¸ Leverage your email list.
Analysis
âœ”ï¸ Gather the results of your campaign;
âœ”ï¸ Measure your content performance using the right metrics according to your goals;
âœ”ï¸ Extract insights to refine your content strategy;
âœ”ï¸ Create a correction plan.
â™»ï¸ Repeat!
I think what most will find surprising is the amount of ‘touch points’ it can take to run a real content strategy. Truth be told, from what I’ve seen, most companies don’t have much of a content strategy, but, the one you see that do, you can see how their business grows overtime, those doing it right.
If you don’t have a content marketing strategy, this is the time to really prioritize going into 2021.
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